Leap of Faith?

Why did the Jews at Sinai accept the Torah before understanding everything in it?

At Mount Sinai, the Jewish people accepted the Torah with the words, na’aseh v’nishma – we will do, then we will understand (Exodus 24:7). Their commitment to keeping God’s Torah was not in any way contingent upon their understanding why they should do so. They were ready to do whatever God would command, irrespective of whether or not it made sense to them.

At first glance, this seems to fly in the face of all we know about Judaism. It is not a religion of blind faith. We define reality by using our mind. Our heart might tell us what “feels good,” but it doesn't tell us what is the truth. Our emotions often blind us from seeing reality. So how could the Jewish people, at this seminal moment of history, seemingly subjugate themselves to mindless faith? It goes against so much of what Judaism holds dear.

Most of us do not understand how a nuclear bomb works. It makes no sense. You take a tiny particle, invisible even to some of the most powerful microscopes, and you split it in half. And by doing so, you release enough energy to destroy a city.

An apple is made of billions of these particles. Cut one open and surely you will blast our whole solar system out of the Milky Way.

Without an understanding of the fundamentals of particle physics, it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.

And yet, if you were told they were dropping a nuclear missile five miles from here, you would run for your life. You wouldn’t worry about how it could possibly be. You’d just run.

We know that somehow, the atom bomb is based on sound principles. Bohr, Planck, Einstein and Oppenheimer understood the physical world in a much deeper way than you and me. We are willing to accept that somehow it works, even though we have no concept of how, because some very smart human beings have told us it is so. And they have proven it to the satisfaction of the entire world.

A metaphysical law like kashrut works the same way. If Einstein and Bohr and Planck had told you that pork particles were so dangerous that they would eventually cause cancer in anyone who ingested them, we would all keep very far away, even if we didn't understand the mechanics behind it.

If God told you that pork is spiritual poison, would you eat it?

So what about God? Let’s say God tells you that pork is spiritual poison. Kryptonite. You will see nothing, feel nothing – but it will slowly eat away at your soul. Would you eat the pork? You might want to understand the mechanics of why. But whatever the case, you wouldn’t eat it.

The Jewish people knew that the Torah was coming straight from the Creator of the Universe. When you have such clarity, it doesn’t require a leap of faith to say, “We will do, and then we will understand.” It merely requires sanity. Who would say anything different?

The Jews who stood at Sinai knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was a God; they experienced national revelation and heard God speak to them directly. They reasoned, quite logically, that if God is telling us an atom bomb is going to explode, we don’t need to understand how it works. We’ll run first and ask questions later.

All this is predicated on knowing there is a God who gave the Torah. For us today, we are bidden with the task of examining the question of God’s existence and the Divine origin of the Torah. Realizing the deep significance of the question, we delve into it with great openness and honesty.

And if we are convinced that the evidence – and there is plenty of it for those who wish to look – points to an infinite Creator, then Shavuot is the time for us to declare, na’aseh v’nishma. If God says that Shabbat guarantees a spiritual infusion into every week, then let’s embrace it. Even if we don’t yet understand how it works. And in the meantime, let's strive to learn and understand whatever we can.

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About the Author

Shaul Rosenblatt grew up in Liverpool. He studied for his smicha at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem where he met his first wife Elana a"h who passed away in 2001 after a long struggle with cancer. They had four children together and Shaul has a further four with his second wife Chana, who he married in 2003. Shaul is the author of Why Bad Things DON'T Happen to Good People, published by Adir Press, a semi biographical look at one of life's greatest philosophical questions. Shaul founded Aish UK in 1993, Tikun UK in 2006, and Cofounded the Innate Health Centre in 2012. Shaul enjoys almost everything in life.

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 6

(5)
Anonymous,
March 29, 2011 4:38 AM

thank you

there are some things that do not need to be pictured conceptually or rationalized. Its just obvious. This article made me laugh because the concept you expounded upon never hit me with any force. Now it did G-D gave us the Torah. He is all knowing and all powerful. Who are we to not listen to him? Bohr, einstein, and others created theories. But who created them and who made it that E=mc2. Scientists expounded it but all knowing Hakodosh Boruch Hu made everything there is to be possible

(4)
Avigayil S,
May 27, 2010 12:58 PM

Well Written

this point was explained very well! thank you

(3)
Kathy,
May 18, 2010 7:56 PM

They had sight

After all that Jewish people SAW God do in Egypt and there in the wilderness, no wonder they would Torah as true. The thing that is mind boggling, is that after all they SAW, they didn't TRUST enough to follow through and OBEY. How long did it take before the golden calf was made and the Law disregarded, as well as the AUTHOR of Law?

Anonymous,
March 29, 2011 6:30 PM

About the golden calf

Kathy, I tottaly agree - the golden calf incident dose seem strange looking at it in a less deep way
how could they (some of the jews) have betrayd g-d right after experiancing his preasence ?
a few weeks ago (before attending a class specifically on this subject ) this would arise a question in me too
If you follow closly in the bible- you will find that the golden calf:
was not made into one porpusly
or as a leader instead of g-d
but rather a leader in moshes place- and if you may ask why g-d let it work to begin with - well it was a challenge- and like any other challenge g-d sends one, it must be in perportion with ones spirituall level-
and as we know- the spirituall level was extreamly hige
and therfore it was quite a tricky challenge.
i hope this was helpfull even though its only very little information- but you could allways turn to another sorce to deepen your knowlege on the subject.

(2)
Judith,
May 16, 2010 11:50 PM

Chronology

The order seems to be wrong. First the Jews said "naaseh v'nishma" and only after that did they experience the Revelation at Sinai.

(1)
Anonymous,
May 16, 2010 5:58 PM

Leap of Faith

Liked the way you explained this. If we understood everything; then we wouldn't have to apply faith. We know G-d, though we have never seen him. That's faith. We have no need to make a statue of him; we have faith. We do not have to understand everything about G-d; we have faith. We have no need to make anything else a god in our life; we have faith in the one G-d. Because we have faith in G-d; we apply ourselves to know and understand him more & more. Not because we do not have faith; but because we have faith in him and his word spoken to us. If you could spend a day with Einstein, would you want to tell him everything you knew? Or would you want him to tell you everything HE knew? We already know what we know, of course we would want to know what he knew. The same is with G-d; we want to strive to know what he knows. That also takes faith!!

Since honey is produced by bees, and bees are not a kosher species, how can honey be kosher?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

The Talmud (Bechoros 7b) asks your very question! The Talmud bases this question on the principle that “whatever comes from a non-kosher species is non-kosher, and that which comes from something kosher is kosher.”

So why is bee-honey kosher? Because even though bees bring the nectar into their bodies, the resultant honey is not a 'product' of their bodies. It is stored and broken down in their bodies, but not produced there. (see Shulchan Aruch Y.D. 81:8)

By the way, the Torah (in several places such as Exodus 13:5) praises the Land of Israel as "flowing with milk and honey." But it may surprise you to know that the honey mentioned in the verse is actually referring to date and fig honey (see Rashi there)!

In 1809, a group of 70 disciples of the great Lithuanian sage the Vilna Gaon, arrived in Israel, after traveling via Turkey by horse and wagon. The Vilna Gaon set out for the Holy Land in 1783, but for unknown reasons did not attain his goal. However he inspired his disciples to make the move, and they became pioneers of modern settlement in Israel. (A large contingent of chassidic Jews arrived in Tzfat around the same time.) The leader of the 1809 group, Rabbi Israel of Shklov, settled in Tzfat, and six years later moved to Jerusalem where he founded the modern Ashkenazic community. The early years were fraught with Arab attacks, earthquakes, and a cholera epidemic. Rabbi Israel authored, Pe'at Hashulchan, a digest of the Jewish agricultural laws relating to the Land of Israel. (He had to rewrite the book after the first manuscript was destroyed in a fire.) The location of his grave remained unknown until it was discovered in Tiberias, 125 years after his death. Today, the descendants of that original group are amongst the most prominent families in Jerusalem.

When you experience joy, you feel good because your magnificent brain produces hormones called endorphins. These self-produced chemicals give you happy and joyful feelings.

Research on these biochemicals has proven that the brain-produced hormones enter your blood stream even if you just act joyful, not only when you really are happy. Although the joyful experience is totally imaginary and you know that it didn’t actually happen, when you speak and act as if that imaginary experience did happen, you get a dose of endorphins.

These chemicals are naturally produced by your brain. They are totally free and entirely healthy.

Many people find that this knowledge inspires them to create more joyful moments. It’s not just an abstract idea, but a physical reality.

Occasionally, when I walk into an office, the receptionist greets me rudely. Granted, I came to see someone else, and a receptionist's disposition is immaterial to me. Yet, an unpleasant reception may cast a pall.

A smile costs nothing. Greeting someone with a smile even when one does not feel like smiling is not duplicity. It is simply providing a pleasant atmosphere, such as we might do with flowers or attractive pictures.

As a rule, "How are you?" is not a question to which we expect an answer. However, when someone with whom I have some kind of relationship poses this question, I may respond, "Not all that great. Would you like to listen?" We may then spend a few minutes, in which I unburden myself and invariably begin to feel better. This favor is usually reciprocated, and we are both thus beneficiaries of free psychotherapy.

This, too, complies with the Talmudic requirement to greet a person in a pleasant manner. An exchange of feelings that can alleviate someone's emotional stress is even more pleasant than an exchange of smiles.

It takes so little effort to be a real mentsch.

Today I shall...

try to greet everyone in a pleasant manner, and where appropriate offer a listening ear.

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